


Remember To Be Careful

by YouLookGoodInLeather



Category: Red Rising Trilogy - Pierce Brown
Genre: AU: The Man from Uncle, Alternate Universe - 1960s, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Cassius has nice hair and that's about it for his character development, Darrow is just here to brood apparently, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Servo sounds like a terrible german hollywood villain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 23:43:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12922743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouLookGoodInLeather/pseuds/YouLookGoodInLeather
Summary: Darrow loathes spies; He only became one to bring them down.The problem with this attitude? A one Agent Bellona, who is too beautiful for things to be remotely fair.[Abandoned WIP]





	Remember To Be Careful

**Author's Note:**

> PSA: I LOATHE this. it's boring and bleh and if I can I'm planning on rewriting the entire thing with a totally different frame and narrative BUT it's 6k and hey, maybe someone wants to read my a) complete lack of knowledge about the 1960s b) ignorance of languages and how they work c) how I know nothing both about stereotypes about different countries, and also nothing of what they're actually like. 
> 
> Did I mention how I hate this? Still, maybe someone will hate it enough to rewrite the concept for me and produce the Darrius spy AU I yearn for. If so, tah in advance.

[ _Rise like Lions after slumber_  
_In unvanquishable number—_  
_Shake your chains to earth like dew_  
_Which in sleep had fallen on you—_ _  
_ Ye are many—they are few.]

 

 

****\- Percy Bysshe Shelley** **

 

 

* * *

 

 

**January 12, 1951 - Moscow, Russia**

 

Darrow first meets Bellona filled with hate, fresh from his own reaping. They are little more than boys then, vigorous and ripe at eighteen years, the whole world before them.

(Except, for Darrow, the reverse is true; His world lies behind him, beyond a crimson curtain that he keeps tightly shut.)

They ought not to be working with one another— Both have only just been inducted into their respective agencies, which are, by all accounts, opposing forces. Darrow stands, straight-backed and scowling, laced up in a uniform marking him as KGB. Beside him, his first mission partner lounges smug-faced in civies, but it takes only his slow smile and posture to tell Darrow he is american.

Both are their respective agencies’ golden boys. Both are killers. Both are still so young.

Agent Bellona - for so he is introduced - gives Darrow one of those all-american rich boy grins, and offers out his hand. “Guess we’ll be working together, my good man,” he drawls. He has the eyes of a hunting cat, out of place among his otherwise seraphim appearance. “Let’s try not to kill each other on our first jaunt, shall we?”

“Try not to get killed,” Darrow tells him. He did not come here to make friends.

He came here to reap blood.

Yet rather than snip back with petty retorts, the golden hunting cat laughs. It is hypnotic to watch, the way he throws his head back to expose his neck, pulse ticking beneath the tanned skin, the undiluted arrogance of his fearlessness. “Is everyone quite as miserable as you in Russia?” He asks, making to withdraw his hand, but Darrow is quick to catch it. He shakes it with a squeeze that would crush the hand of lesser men. Bellona squeezes back, harder.

Darrows answers in english. “There is no one quite like me in Russia.”

 

* * *

 

 

**July 21, 1963 - New York, USA**

 

They do not meet again for many, many years. Things come to pass in that time, as they always do, but they are happenings upon which Darrow would much prefer not to dwell. He loses the shine to his skin that comes with youth, and innocence, though he did not think he had any left. Somehow, they still find a way to strip it from him, in layers thin enough that he could so easily forget himself.

But he does not forget.

For the second meeting, he is a man. Scars are woven into older scars, dusting his knuckles, jaw, and mouth. His body, once lanky and skinny as a rake, had broadened at the shoulders and the limbs, to the point where his thickness gives him a dominating presence. Gone is the boyishness he never knew he had, abandoning his face to flee as a hard, grim gravity invades its place. He looks more like a man of war than a spy. But there is one rare instance where appearances tell the truth.

He sits at a cafe on a peer on Long Island, drinking coffee whilst looking out across the water. It is late afternoon at a popular tourist destination, so the place if busy, teeming with young families and flyaway teenagers posing for one another. He watches them and thinks how different things are here. He watches, but does not remember.

“Well I’ll be damned.” He doesn’t need to look to know who it is. Though they’ve met only once, he could name that lilting cadence anywhere. Still, he ought to demonstrate some attempt at common courtesy, so he looks up. Agent Bellona looks back. “No chance you’re the same Andromeda I met all those years ago. God, back then you looked like your mother had just spit you out of her nether regions, doe eyed and all. Look at you now.” He gestures to him with one hand. “All grown up.”

The same cannot be said for him. Bellona may be more muscular, his jaw now licked with stubble, face heavier with encroaching lines, but he is the same Bellona well and truly— same mane of golden curls - if now shot with silver -, same asymmetric smirk, same hungry eyes. All the desertion of youth has served to do is leave him feeling twice as dangerous. His movements are more marked, more calculating.

They have both survived this long. That alone should be enough to terrify.

The American takes a seat at the table. He still sits the same, tipping back as if daring gravity to unbalance him, legs stretched out, ankles crossed. It only serves to make Darrow sit up straighter. ‘Still not much of a talker, huh?’ He says. Darrow is not here to make friends - not with _him_ , anyway - so he declines to answer.

‘Figures. Though makes no sense, mind you. I’ve heard you’re quite the infiltrator. And executioner too. ‘The Reaper’, they’re calling you back at headquarters. Nice job on Nabokov, by the way.’ Bellona waves a hand at the look he gives him. ‘Oh please, it was obvious it was you. We Americans aren’t half as uninformed as your lot likes to think. Of course, you were trying to make it look obvious. His associates bend nicely after that, I hope?’

Darrow should say nothing, does say nothing, but the small smile he gives the other is purely for the satisfaction. Bellona tries to hide it, but he’s impressed, nodding to himself whilst tapping his knee. A younger Darrow would have missed that, did miss that. But then, Darrow is not the same man Bellona met all those years ago; not on the surface, anyway.

He is still telling himself every night that below, he hasn’t changed. It’s more a prayer than an observation.

He waits for his companion to bring up the task at hand, but instead Bellona seems more interested in sunning himself. He catches Darrow looks and smirks, thumbing his lapel. ‘Yves Saint Laurent. Nice, isn’t it?’

‘You’ve read the dossier?’ Darrow asks.

‘You’ve lost your accent.’

‘Not lost,’ he answers. ‘Removed for the trip. You, on the other hand, still sound insufferably American.’

‘Well, we’re in America, aren’t we?’

Signalling a passing waitress for another coffee, Bellona leans back. ‘Of course I’ve read it. I suggest beginning in Paris,’ he says, pronouncing it ‘par- _ee_ ’.

‘Obviously.’ Shooting Darrow a wry smile for the patronisation, he continues.  

‘Once we locate this Goblin, we’ll need to get him out as we promised. Shouldn’t be too difficult. And I do so love the french.’

Darrow is tempted to tell him that the french likely despise him, but given their history together, he doesn’t plan on cracking jokes, however condescending. Well. Maybe a little condescension can be tolerated.

‘And how do you propose we make contact with our Goblin?’ Darrow asks as Bellona thanks the waitress, his smile unashamedly flirtatious. She, who has kept her distance from the imposing Darrow, blushes and smiles back. He despairs; Not that Darrow should be one to criticise.

‘Oh,’ Bellona says, running his forefinger around the rim of his mug as he retrieves his most devious smile. ‘For that, I have just the thing.’

 

* * *

 

 

**Febuary 08, 1951 - London, England**

 

The conclusion of the mission has to run like clockwork, else Darrow is going to murder someone— literally and figuratively. They run a honeypot op, he posing as the bait, which - because then he is still young - bothers him to no end, especially given how the target is a man. It is not that he is never that way inclined, but rather that the idea of Agent Bellona watching another man rest thick fingers on his waist unsettles him. He is not sure why, exactly, but has a theory: That it is because, despite near a month of working together, he still thinks Bellona is a fucking _dick_.

Actually, scratch the ‘despite’; If anything, he thinks the american’s a dick _because_ of their month together. He’s a strange one, Bellona. He runs the risk of danger for no good reason - like Darrow would if he had no ulterior agenda - snickers at random acts of cruelty, and worst of all, has the most unagreeable moments of kindness. It’s hard to explain, but one moment he is the prowling hunter, the next he is touching Darrow’s wrist lightly and telling him to relax in a voice more soft than condescending.

There’s a changeability to him that Darrow knows he cannot - should not - trust. Yet here he is, kissing a known perpetrator of genocide, with only Bellona to rely on to stop him getting murdered.

The target, a British arsehole known as Joseph Bennett - who aided the nazis to the point of doing everything but pulling the trigger - is watching Darrow with eyes too much like his partner’s. They’re animal eyes, predatory, though there’s none of the playful wickedness in these ones. Darrow knows what this man likes to do to his lovers. Again: Bellona is the only chance he has of avoiding that particular fate.

Bennett leans over. The hand he rests on the small of Darrow’s back presses harder, one finger circling the hard outline of a vertebra. ‘Would you care to accompany me somewhere a little more secluded?’ His cologne is strong, too strong. Darrow finishes off his drink to stop the answer he wants to throw this bastard’s way from bubbling to the surface. Instead, he bats his lashes, and does his best to ignore the way Bellona is smirking into his cufflinks over in the corner.

His answer is short, Russian accent sharp. It does not matter; He will show Bellona why he is feared bone-deep back in his homeland. ‘Yes.’

 

* * *

 

 

**July 23, 1963 - Paris, France**

 

For the most part, Paris is beautiful at night. Everything is lit up, the architecture somehow simultaneously minimalist and intricate, and there is something about the place that you feel nowhere else, perhaps placebo from reputation alone. There are plenty of distinguished restaurants, hotels, and elegant diversions.

Where Bellona takes them is not one.

‘The Elephant’ is the kind of gay bar that Darrow only frequents when out of Russia and desperate for a mindless fuck. Dirty, dank, and dim, the attraction of the place is the vast quantities of men, and the location. With the recent indecent exposure act, raids on such establishments are aplenty, but _The Elephant_ is just out of the way enough to escape most of the intimidation.

If the garish lights, repugnant sweaty smell, and noise levels weren’t enough to repel Darrow, the arm wrapped around his waist would do the trick. Unfortunately, it belongs to his mission partner, whose arm he is supposed to _not_ break.

‘Is this really necessary?’ He growls under his breath as they pause at the door to gather their bearings.

‘Oh, absolutely my good man. This might be Paris, but these people are still prone to suspicion. If we wish to pass unquestioned, we must _blend in_. You look far too straight to do that without my generous aid.’

Darrow would argue had his ass not been pinched by a passing stranger. Bellona abuses his momentary distraction to drag him elsewhere, through the crowd of poorly dressed men and over to the corner. To his credit, Darrow is glad to take a seat, away from the bustle, and even better, somewhere he can (literally) cover his arse.

Bellona has dressed down for the occasion, white t-shirt tucked into high-waisted trousers, pulled tight over his pectorals. The lighting just manages to be stark enough to render his nipples visible through the stretched material, along with a prominent scar that runs down to one from his clavicle. Not that Darrow is looking.

Dated rock and roll is playing from the jukebox, against which several young men are posturing to look older, hair coiffed back, teddy boys in prim sweater vests and slacks. Those who are older intermingle, the bar busy, drink flowing fast. Still, the glances at the door are frequent, along with a hush falling whenever things outside get too loud; There is a general sense of unease well-covered by virility, a bravado that Bellona suits well.

Why Goblin had to be a patron of such an establishment as this, where the sex is too ostentatious and the law could raid at any time, Darrow does not know. He charts it up to the universe’s continuing malevolence against him, and settles for scowling at an nondescript mark upon the table. It is with great difficulty that he ignores Bellona’s studying of him.

He is about to tell the man to kindly fuck off, when he is interrupted. ‘Little bit obvious, don’t you think?’ The german lilt tells Darrow who it is before looking up. A stumpy slip of a man with a narrow, ugly face and a blunt mohawk leers down at them — or at least tries to, though he is as tall standing as they are sitting.

‘What a little goblin of a man you are,’ Bellona observes, seemingly affronted by the man’s appearance judging by his wrinkled nose. Goblin just grins.

‘That is exactly what I am.’

Sliding into the booth to join them, he looks between two and twists his face into a snarl. ‘Right bunch of ponces you look. You see my two tails by the bar?’

‘ _They_ are obvious,’ Darrow says without glancing at the two suits leaning at against the bartop.

‘Been following me everywhere. Worse than Scheiß- Berlin. They only leave me alone at home, and even then they’re outside the front door twenty-four seven.’ His rage soon morphs into an impish delight. ‘Which means I see only _one_ solution as to how we might have ourselves a proper chat.’

Goblin - who they learn is named Sevro - saunters out of _The Elephant_ with two gorgeous pieces of ass on his arms, looking rather pleased with himself. It helps that everyone who witnesses his leaving looks profoundly shell-shocked. ‘Bastards think you need a pretty face to pull. Perfect revenge to leave them on.’

The two gorgeous pieces of ass share a look, Bellona failing to hide amusement, Darrow condemning him to the depths of hell for making them make contact here. As predicted, they are followed by the suits back through the cobbled streets to one of many narrow apartments. Sevro makes a honeypot worthy display of snogging each of them thoroughly before showing them inside. Darrow gives Bellona a death glare, only to find him looking similarly miffed.

 

* * *

 

 

**February 08, 1951 - London, England**

 

Back at Bennet’s cosmopolitan apartment, up on Southbank overlooking the Thames, Darrow looks at the man unconscious on the bed. The drugs he slipped into the bastard’s drink should give them a couple of hours.

First things first: he has to make it look like a run of the mill robbery. With absolute precision, he creates chaos, flinging clothes everywhere, stealing whatever cash and valuables he can find. Takes the man’s passport. Buttons his crumpled shirt back up.

When he lets Bellona in, it is obvious he did not sort out his appearance well enough— he can still feel the chapped rawness of his lips, the darkening hickey on his neck. Bellona is grazing his eyes over each sign of the seduction like he can somehow taste them. ‘Have fun, darling?’ He teases, sweeping in past him to do his part. The unsubtle leer upon his face is starting to raise questions to Darrow about why the arsehole came up with _this_ particular plan. He is especially suspicious about why he himself had to play bait.

‘Oh don’t scowl my good man, you’ll wrinkle that lovely face of yours,’ Bellona tells him, which only furthers his scowling. However, Darrow does have to admit that for an agent as young as he is, the man is akin to a god. He swans about planting the americans’ trackers in all the suits, shoes, bugs the phone and the laptop with an ease that says nothing of unfamiliarity. Unlike Darrow, he was born to this. Or perhaps it’s an act.

It’s hard to tell when working in a world where the native tongue is a language of lies.

They stash the laptop back where it came from to create the impression the prostitute Bennett solicited did not find it to steal, and do a final sweep of the apartment. Darrow is supposed to be helping bug the place, but the first plant he positions earns him a heavy sigh from Bellona. ‘Oh dear my good man, did they really rush your training so? Even a punk like Bennett will find that in a matter of seconds.’ Without asking, he removes and relocates the wire.

Darrow blames the drink. He blames that too for how he’s devoid of comebacks, instead half-sulking in his rumpled civies and watching the other work. It is infuriating, how he swaggers about throwing bemused smirks over his shoulder, yet Darrow cannot look away. There’s something… appealing in the way he looks, the way he moves, the lazy grace of it.

They are two very different creatures. He tells himself the interest is just a matter of studying the opposition. This gets more difficult when the drink’s screwing with his stomach and sending heat straight to his groin.

‘Mission accomplished,’ Bellona murmurs once they’re outside in the midnight darkness, out on the pavement, breath white curling blooms before them. He speaks whilst straightening Darrow’s shirt, ‘Check everything’s all in order tomorrow, and you’ll never have to see my face again. You’ll be rather thrilled by that prospect, I imagine.’

‘Immensely.’

Eyes crinkling at the corners, Bellona smiles at him, too fond, as if they’re friends instead of natural enemies and monsters. ‘Shall we get a drink to celebrate our parting?’ He says it like it’s easy. Darrow swallows like it’s hell. Yet, storm in his stomach, he still says,

‘Yes.’

 

* * *

 

 

**July 24, 1963 - Paris, France**

 

‘So,’ Sevro says, pouring them out both a double of vodka, downing his own like a true deadman. ‘Who sent you?’

‘We, ah- We represent different parties, both with equal interest in maintaining your safety,’ Bellona answers. Darrow thinks he ought to consider going into politics, but then prays that he doesn’t for the sakes of the American people.

‘Ja ja, you mean the safety of my information. Whatever gets me await from my spitzels. You, America. You…’ Sevro looks him up and down, chewing the inside of his cheek before uncapping the bottle again and pouring himself another glass. ‘I would have thought Russia should hand me to Germany as a little present.’

Darrow has no intention of disclosing what his agency’s intentions for Goblin and his information are, so instead he forces a tight-lipped smile that politely suggests the man be grateful for any help he can receive. ‘Better than the Bundesnachrichtendienst, no?’

‘Wahr,’ Sevro concedes, pulling a face at the burn of the liquor. ‘So, you get me out, I help you, ja?’

‘Oh no, Goblin man,’ Bellona interrupts, taking the bottle and pouring him yet another. ‘You tell us your story, we see if we believe you. If we do, we take you away to the land of the free. _Ja_?’  

Though he accepts the drink, Sevro looks less than thrilled by the proposal. ‘You people, always so distrusting.’

‘Says the man who fled Berlin because he thought he was being followed.’

‘I am being followed, even here! Besides, Berlin? Not so good right now.’ There is a slur in his voice now, though he usurps the bottle once more and now drinks directly from the neck. He sits, gesturing for them to follow his lead.

‘So, information. Tell me what so far has reached you.’

‘Jack shit,’ Bellona says, before Darrow can step in and be more diplomatic. ‘That you’re known as ‘Goblin’, that you kill people for a living, and that your father was some kind of science officer for Hitler.’

‘We’ve heard your father may be involved in something interesting,’ Darrow interjects, quiet, calm, thrown into the role of ‘good cop’ as if this were the movies. ‘And that he’s recently gone missing.’

‘ _Mein vater_. Ja, he was involved in ‘something interesting’ as you say. Got himself involved in a terrorist organization.’ Sevro finished the bottle and waves a hand, grinning like a madman. ‘I helped. But you already know this.’ Darrow can recite every detail of the reports that let him know that. Men found concealed within the corpses of horses. Bodies fed to wolves. War criminals seemingly scratched to ribbons. From what he’d heard, each one of them had deserved it.

‘He did good job playing the drunken fool, but not good job enough. The work he’s been doing, he did not share with me, but I know some details. The Sons of Ares, they were distilling a kind of drug. It could be used to alter minds, change thinking. It worked, sometimes. Sometimes, people, they go crazy. I had to clean up the mess.’ His eyes, though they ought to be glazed with the haze of alcohol, flash, sharp and alert. ‘So whoever has him? They can make one big Scheiß- mess, if they’re rich enough.’

Darrow is left wishing there was some of that drink left. Not because he fears whoever has Fitchner, the missing father-scientist. What he fears is what will happen when they find him. What will happen when he hands him over to his employers.  

Where should he draw the line between the need for infiltration and becoming an accomplice to the rendering of hell?   

It is a debate that has haunted him every second of all these years, and resurfaces yet again as he is due to sleep. Sevro has left them to the first floor for the night, stumbling upstairs to his own room and swearing he’ll gut their throats if they dare disturb him. The spies, meanwhile, are left to make do with a sofa and, bizarrely, a wolfskin.

‘Shotgun couch,’ Bellona says the second Goblin disappears. ‘No chance I’m sleeping on that thing. Probably fed half the Nazi party to it.’

‘Yes,’ Darrow says, putting a great deal of effort into the suppression of a smirk. ‘Delicate American boy must need his beauty sleep. Besides, I’ve slept on worse.’

‘I’ve done tough missions too, you know,’ Bellona grumbles, readjusting the cushions and digging out the matted blanket.

Without meaning to, Darrow thinks on this — recalls the brief he received on this new, older version of Bellona. He knows well the man has slept on worse, that he has not slept at all at times. His capture and torture by Darrow’s own people has him wondering how he can still grin and joke with him. Perhaps he should be more concerned about having his throat slit in the night. Yet this is Bellona. His worries about the man have too little to do with potential murder, given how he ought to be little more than a stranger.

Settling down on the wolfskin, Darrow rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. Light from outside leaves them half-lit, Bellona’s curls defined by streaks of catching amber. They’re far enough for things to be close to quiet, the occasional sloshed passerby preventing total silence.

‘You’ve changed so much,’ Bellona murmurs from where his long limbs drape off the sofa. ‘Not just appearances. What happened to the scared little boy I used to know?’

‘I grew up,’ Darrow answers. ‘Besides, you didn’t know me very well.’

‘No.’ There’s a pause, too meditative for his liking. ‘I didn’t. But that was your choice.’

‘It was the only choice.’

He’d been wondering when they might revisit this, had been waiting for it to crash down around him and ruin the mission entirely. But then, he’d forgotten that they were both professionals, and Bellona, asshole that he might be, is not a total bastard. The last day they’d seen one another, he hadn’t even brought it up, just grinned and shook his hand goodbye. As if they hadn’t…

‘What were you thinking that night?’ Bellona asks, too gentle, too curious, as if they’re both just boys again. Darrow is too tired too this, drunk on emotional exhaustion. He’s been that way for years now. There’s a reason he’s always avoided exposing himself to these kinds of conversations. A weird nostalgia in his stomach makes him honest. He answers,

‘I was thinking that you were beautiful.’

 

* * *

 

 

**February 09, 1951 - London, England**

 

The bar’s in Soho, neighbouring a dozen theatres and filled with drunken dandies and billows of smoke. Bellona’s joined them, perched on the barstool with a cigarette pinched between his slender fingers. Darrow watches that instead of his face, fixating on the steady smoulder of the reddened tip.

He made the mistake of accepting a free drink, and now he’s thinking that Bellona has beautiful fingers, pretty boy fingers with shapely nails and none of his hands’ callouses. His instinct was correct: This is hell.

Darrow’s rentboy gear goes down a storm here. He has no idea what about his attire identifies him as a seller of sexual wares, but men and women alike flock to him every so often to pay him a smile and a request to join him. Half the time he refuses, half the time Bellona beats him to it and puts a hand upon his shoulder, smiles murderlike at them, and apologies, but dear Andromeda here is otherwise engaged for the evening. Of course, the moment they’re gone he is cackling, because Darrow’s crimson and sorely tempted to accept an offer just to escape this man.

Bellona fits in here like a well-made leather glove. He fits in well everywhere, a born chameleon with smiles and manners for every occasion, but here he’s in his element. His adult-teen body is clasped in a tailored navy suit, accentuating the narrow slightness of his waist, his long legs, the colour setting off his golden eyes, golden hair. He drags from his fag without coughing, unlike Darrow who begrudgingly takes a toke and nearly dies.

Bellona talks, Darrow listens. Watches. Catalogues the mannerisms of the man opposite him, as if he is planning an impersonation. Bellona has this way of flicking his hand from the wrist whilst talking, punctuating this happening and that scandal, cigarette dangling, discarding ash. It’s a motion that draws his sleeves down his arms, exposing just the smallest kiss of his wrist. Darrow watches so closes he catches the blue hint of the veins, the raised impression of the tendons. Watered, he thinks he falls in love with that one wrist.

Whilst he’s staring, Bellona leans over to him. A golden hand reaches over and thumbs his collar, just on the edge so that the very tip of his nail skirts across the skin of his neck. ‘You know, you _do_ look rather handsome like that.’ He’s close, close enough that Darrow can smell the liquor on his breath, the smoke on his tongue. His lips are so close to his ear. He wonders if he’ll kiss it.

As if it’s nothing, Bellona draws back. He finishes the fag off, grinds it down in the ashtray, then finally shoots Darrow a look. Bellona plays it cool enough so that if wanted, they both can pretend it didn’t happen, but there’s a shift in those eyes now that linger on lips and neck, not on his failings. ‘Back to mine for a nightcap? The wine they serve here is atrocious, and don’t even get me started on the vintage.’

Darrow’s pulse is biting in his neck, like a tick burrowing down to his throat and silencing all words, all logic. All he can do is nod.

 

* * *

 

**July 29, 1963 - Rome, Italy**

 

Sevro, long sent off on a flight back to the US of A, calls them around five o’clock Central European Time. Going by the sounds in the background, he has been prompt to immerse himself in America’s nightlife; Then again, he clearly chose to be relocated to San Fransisco for a reason.

‘My little pricklickers. Not been screwing without me, I hope?’ His cheery greeting on speakerphone is enough to make both of them grimace.

‘Goblin. We’ve held up our side of the bargain. Now for yours. Who are we to make contact with?’

‘Oh, you’ll like her. She could eat the both of you alive,’ He tells them in German, chuckling to himself at the mental image. ‘Virginia Augustus. Though you’ll find her more easily by her business name. Dear Mustang. She runs the racing track just south of you. Find her, and she’s promised me she’s got a way to get you boys in touch with her _lovely_ brother, The Jackal.’

Just the mention of The Jackal was enough to sour the taste of Darrow’s mouth. The man is something of a legend, barely thirty and already a criminal mastermind, and unfortunately legitimate in most of his fortunes, won through success in the computing industry. This mask of honest labor only makes things worse in Darrow’s eyes. To him, it proves the man chose crime not out of necessity, but amusement. Which, given the nature of his crimes, makes perfect sense.

The carving up of innocents to harvest organs, predatory loan sharking, exploitative market manipulation – all are basic routine to The Jackal. The man is king of half the capitalism in the world and he does an excellent job of ensuring things never get too cushy for the less fortunate. Here is a man Darrow feels no qualms whatsoever about taking down.

‘You spoil us, Goblin. A meeting with Mustang herself,’ Bellona purrs ,and Darrow knew that tone. He ought not to be surprised; Bellona seemed the kind to be attracted to anything, even the sisters of monsters. Unfortunately, disgust must register on his face, for Bellona balks at him. ‘Surely, you know of Virginia Augustus? Oh my good man, she could be a model if she weren’t so set on using her brains. Philanthropist. Ruthless businesswoman. The muse of Pucci himself? What rock do you live under; I thought you were supposed to be a spy?’

‘She’s nothing compared to your colleague, Agent Julii,’ Sevro interrupts in dry bemusement. ‘But yes, she’s not half bad.’

‘Careful there Goblin,’ Bellona says with a conspiratorial grin at Darrow, who struggles to resist returning it. ‘She really will eat you alive.’

‘I’ll invite her round for dinner.’

Taking down the address and directions in amongst Sevro’s tangents about American men and women - specifically, their fucking habits - the two agents are quick to bid him farewell before he hangs up on them. ‘Crazy bastard,’ Bellona mutters, half repairing, half laughing.

‘I like him,’ Darrow says with honesty. He’s never met someone so genuine in his life.

‘You would. He’s nearly as fucked in the head as you are.'

 

* * *

 

 

**February 09, 1951 - London, England**

 

They walk back together in silence. It’s been the same way every night, given how they have both been allocated hotel rooms in the same shithole. This time though, there’s a difference in the air - as frost bitten as ever - and it leaves Darrow with a thickness in his throat, a quickening palpitation in his chest. He’d blame it on the booze, but he lives up to the Russian stereotype in at least one way and knows he could drink Bellona under the table.

Bellona, for once, is silent. He’s watching the big city lights, their shine catching in his hair, his lashes, like he knows how angelic it makes him seem. The man is a painting in motion, and he frames himself too well.

Darrow is not normally this weak to beautiful men. The KGB is filled with plenty of attractive agents, men and women, but for them he has no agape staring. He wonders, absently, if it’s the novelty of the american’s heritage that captures him. But no; The man is still a spy, here or there, and thus has the same blood on his hands and those that Darrow does so despise. It is a loathing with excellent reason. Enough reason that he should not be watching him this way.

That reason creeps up his back as they await the elevator, Bellona flirting with the receptionist as he does every night. It slicks the back of Darrow’s shirt with sweat, following them to the apartment. It stays close as they slip inside.

Bellona flicks the lights on. It’s an identical design to Darrow’s room, only more neatly kept and furnished with bottles of cologne, a hung up suit, and a stack of books with, to his surprise, a pair of horn-rimmed glasses folded upon it. ‘Make yourself at home,’ Bellona instructs, gesturing to the cupboards. ‘There’s an open bottle in the fridge, or whiskey on the right.’ The mocking grin returns. ‘Try not to pass out before I’m back.’

He vanishes into the bathroom, the downpour of a shower sounding soon after. The door he left unlocked. Even tipsy, Darrow is socialised well enough to know an invitation when he sees one.

Pressing his fingers to the wood of the door, he stands and listens. He thinks he hears the stripping of the other as he imagines; belt undone, metal band clinking against the tiled floor. Trousers dropping, Bellona stepping out bare legs and all. The unbuttoning of his shirt, as slow and languid as all his movements are outside of combat. The way he strips it from his arms and stretches out in the process.

Darrow doesn’t need to open the door to see it— a closing of the eyes is all that is required to strengthen the picture. He rests his forehead to the door, the cool press of it welcome as heat flushes his face pink-red. The metallic cold of the door handle is just as tempting.

He has an excellent reason to loathe spies. He has a surplus of reasons to hate this one.

 

* * *

 

 

**February 09, 1951 - London, England**

 

Kissing beneath the scalding water, Darrow explores the narrowness of Bellona’s waist, neck, wrists. Those wrists, those devil wrists that captivated him now blush beneath his teeth as he nips at them, soft. Their owner, pressed up against the tilted wall, moans in quiet crescendo tones.

He’s altered in the water, lashes lowered, olive skin swollen with redness. His body is hard with budding muscle that he will grow into in the next few years, but there’s still a boyish delicacy to the tapering of his hips, the definition of his ribs. He’s soft too, soft in the lips, the cheeks, and as Darrow is now exploring, the ass. Outside in suits and armed with cigarettes he seems a man about the world. Here, he’s stripped back to his youth, concealed in the surprise of his whimpers, the uncertain touches he returns.

Here, Darrow is the expert. He knows the bedroom well, has _loved_ well before. This unexpected vulnerability leaves him, mid-kiss, sickening. He never expected Bellona to be vulnerable. He was always meant to be the monster, indulged in just for sex this one to-be-forgotten night. Like this, Darrow doesn’t feel so noble.

He doesn’t know how to hate this version of Bellona.

When the shower cuts, Darrow doesn’t bother to dry. He grabs a towel, his clothes, and leaves the other to his dressing. ‘I’m getting a drink.’ The door clicks shut behind him.

When Cassius emerges, naked save for a towel around his curls, the apartment is deserted. He checks, and finds the open bottle gone. He does not go in search of its location. Instead, he drags out the whiskey, uncaps the top, and pours himself a glass. He’ll drink himself to sleep alone tonight.


End file.
